US Pres­i­dent-elect re­ceives call from Chi­nese coun­ter­part

Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping has reaf­firmed the im­por­tance of re­la­tions with the United States in a phone con­ver­sa­tion with Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump, open­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion with a politi­cian who had been strongly crit­i­cal of China dur­ing his cam­paign.

State me­dia re­ports said Xi con­grat­u­lated Trump on his elec­tion in their talk yes­ter­day and said co­op­er­a­tion was the “only cor­rect choice” for China and the US, the world’s two big­gest economies.

“At present, there is an im­por­tant op­por­tu­nity and huge po­ten­tial in China-US co­op­er­a­tion,” Xi told Trump.

Trump had ac­cused China of un­fair trade prac­tices and cur­rency ma­nip­u­la­tion dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign, threat­en­ing to slap a 45 per cent tar­iff on all Chi­nese im­ports.

De­spite that, Chi­nese state me­dia largely favoured Trump over his Demo­cratic Party ri­val Hil­lary Clin­ton. She was dis­liked in Bei­jing over her pro­mo­tion of the US “pivot” to Asia that is viewed by China’s lead­ers as an at­tempt to con­tain their coun­try’s rise to global

Anti-Trump protests con­tin­ued across Amer­ica on Sun­day. In Man­hat­tan, peo­ple car­ried signs in English and Span­ish say­ing things like “Hate won’t make us great” and chanted “We are here to stay”. Protests were also held in Los An­ge­les (pic­tured), San Fran­cisco, Philadel­phia and other cities.

promi­nence.

Bei­jing’s ri­valry with Wash­ing­ton largely boils down to eco­nomic is­sues, es­pe­cially China’s $334 bil­lion trade sur­plus with the US and ac­cu­sa­tions of un­fair sub­si­dies for ex­porters and the con­don­ing of in­tel­lec­tual prop­erty theft.

The sides are also op­posed over se­cu­rity in east Asia, par­tic­u­larly China’s as­ser­tion of its ter­ri­to­rial claims in the South China Sea where it has been cre­at­ing new is­lands atop atolls and

coral reefs. Bei­jing has also closely aligned its for­eign pol­icy with Rus­sia, putting it at odds with the US over is­sues, in­clud­ing the civil war in Syria and the de­ploy­ment of US anti-mis­sile de­fences in South Korea.

Aside from his crit­i­cisms of Bei­jing, Trump had touted his busi­ness deal­ings with Chi­nese com­pa­nies, al­though he is not known at present to have any ma­jor in­vest­ments in the coun­try.

Trump has also touted a more iso­la­tion­ist for­eign pol­icy that could ben­e­fit China by weak­en­ing US sup­port for long­time Asian al­lies.